Mayor Ed Lee's Sunday parking pitch blasted

Published 10:55 pm, Thursday, January 16, 2014

Free Sunday parking and free Muni for some are ideas that may have populist appeal in a city saddled with $4 toast, a median home price of $1 million and the highest rents in the country. But even some of Mayor Ed Lee's allies say his plan to stop charging at many parking meters on Sundays and make Muni permanently free for low-income youths is flawed.

The 1-year-old program of charging at parking meters on Sunday afternoons brought in nearly $6 million last year, more than half of it from parking tickets that are as much as $74 apiece. That was far more than the $1.9 million in anticipated revenue. The free Muni youth program will cost from $4 million to $7 million a year.

Combined, the two would amount to at least a $10 million dent in Muni's annual budget, which a mayoral task force recently found was already woefully inadequate.

"Muni is in a deep, deep hole," said Supervisor Scott Wiener, a political ally whom Lee appointed to the transportation task force. "We need to be shoring up Muni; we need to be expanding its capacity. We are in a deep hole and we need to dig ourselves out. I hope the mayor can explain how $10 million to $15 million is going to be replaced."

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$500 million bond

Lee is supporting a proposal from the task force to put a $500 million general obligation bond for transportation needs on the November ballot, but that's as far as he has gone. The task force found the city has $10.1 billion in transportation infrastructure needs through 2030, including repairing streets, improving the bike network and upgrading Muni's fleet of streetcars and buses.

It recommended trying to raise about $3 billion in bonds, taxes and fees, including about $1 billion from a separate November ballot measure to increase the vehicle license fee from 0.65 percent to 2 percent. That increase fared poorly in at least one recent poll, and so far Lee has not pushed for it.

Lee's administration said the moves are about easing the financial crunch on residents while finding more strategic, long-term revenue sources for Muni.

"Nickel-and-diming people on Sundays is not the way to do it," Lee spokeswoman Christine Falvey said. "San Francisco families are dealing with a lot of affordability issues. He's going to be going to the ballot to ask them to fund this transportation bond, and it's time to roll back the Sunday meters. ... He thinks that is a very thoughtful way to do it."

54,000 Sunday tickets

While plenty of residents who found themselves saddled with one of the more than 54,000 parking tickets issued on a Sunday may agree, others do not.

"The parking management program that San Francisco has been rolling out for the last few years has been getting huge accolades around the country for being a more effective way to allocate space on our streets," Shahum said. "It's disappointing to see the mayor seemingly back away from that."

Since Sunday meter enforcement has been in place, parking availability in several neighborhoods doubled, people spent less time circling to find a space and there was more turnover, a report in December by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency found.

"It's surprising to hear the mayor imply that our transportation system is starving for funds, which it is," and then seek to cut a source of revenue, Shahum said. "Now does not seem to be the right time to be sending that message."